Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Jon Batiste will kick off his 2024 tour in the Pacific Northwest

 File - Jon Batiste performs during the Bourbon and Beyond Music Festival in Louisville, Ky., on Sept. 17, 2023. Batiste received six Grammy nominations on Friday. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)
Amy Harris
/
Invision/AP
Jon Batiste performs during the Bourbon and Beyond Music Festival in Louisville, Ky., on Sept. 17, 2023.

Jon Batiste, the Grammy- and Oscar-winning musician and former bandleader for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will embark on his first North American headlining tour in support of his latest album. The expansive “World Music Radio,” featuring his signature rich blend of R&B, hip-hop, swing, jazz and pop, was released earlier this summer.

The tour news arrived on the heels of the 2024 Grammy nominations announcement: Batiste is up for six Grammys, including album, song, and record of the year.

The “Uneasy Tour: Purifying the Airwaves for the People” will kick off Feb. 16 in Portland, Oregon, and take Batiste across the U.S. and Canada. The tour wraps in Miramar Beach, Florida, on April 27.

Along the way, he'll hit numerous cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and Atlanta.

“I’m into numbers, so: 20 theaters and 24 performances to bless the pivotal year 2024. For my first solo run I wanted to play in smaller venues and curate experiences that let me really feel the people while I play. Think of these 24 shows less as a tour and more as a series of 24 not to be missed experiences, each being one-of-a-kind,” Batiste told The Associated Press.

“We are designing these performances to be catalysts to bring people together, raise awareness for things I care about and inspire change in this country, and the world."

The goal, he says, is to experience his performances in “intimate, life-affirming presentations created to unite, uplift and inspire us all in this time of change and uncertainty,” he explained.

Tickets are now on sale for the tour, including the Feb. 17 show at Seattle's Paramount Theatre.

For those who can't wait until next year for their Batiste: The multi-instrumentalist is the subject of a new documentary titled “American Symphony,” which follows his journey to compose a symphony while his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, undergoes cancer treatment. The film is now in theaters and on Netflix.

The Associated Press (“AP”) is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. On any given day, more than half the world’s population sees news from the AP. Founded in 1846, the AP today is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering. The AP considers itself to be the backbone of the world’s information system, serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television, and online customers with coverage in text, photos, graphics, audio and video.